Comic-booky 'Limitless' is just smart enough, and fun enough, to work

Limitless" isn't based on a graphic novel, but you wouldn't guess that by watching it.

Robert De Niro eyes Bradley Cooper with suspicion in an image from the stylishly shot thriller 'Limitless.'

There are the comic-booky visuals, the quirky, quick-cut comic-booky asides, and most of all there's the central comic-book question it poses:

If you could take a drug of questionable legality that gave you the ability to access 100 percent of your brain -- as opposed to the standard 20 percent -- and a four-digit IQ in the process, would you take it?

Rather than stretching out the inevitable, director Neil Burger ("The Lucky Ones, " "The Illusionist") wisely plays coy for all of about eight seconds as to what Bradley Cooper's main character will do when posed with that question. Cooper ("The Hangover") plays a struggling writer in New York City, a tortured artist whose girlfriend has just left him and whose book deadline is bearing down on him mercilessly. If not for those dreamy blue eyes, he'd have nothing going for him. So of course, it's down the hatch and on with the story.

That story -- based on the novel "The Dark Fields, " by Alan Glynn -- is a flawed, sometimes lurching one. But it's a fun one, too -- more fun than you'd guess by watching the movie's trailer, which suggests some sort of somber, depressing Brett Easton Ellis rich-boy addiction drama along the lines of "Less Than Zero" or "American Psycho."

Burger's stylishly directed film has a breezier tone than that, making up for any narrative hiccups with a mix of wry humor and comic-book-inspired visual flourishes. Granted, those visual flourishes aren't as interesting as they would have been, say, 15 years ago, in our pre-"Fight Club" world. Now with movie after movie adopting them ("RED, " "Watchmen, " "The Losers, " "Day Watch" ...), Burger finds himself walking that fine line between clever and cliché. More often than not, however, he comes down on the right side.

Bradley Cooper finds himself on the run, in a scene from 'Limitless.'

In the story, Cooper's character is transformed by the mystery drug called "NZT, " which comes in tiny, clear tablets that look like drops of dried silicon. Just like that, he goes from a disheveled loser who spends his days staring at a blank page to an energetic, razor-sharp dynamo with tiger blood coursing through his veins.

"A tablet a day, and I was limitless, " Cooper says in the film's sporadic narration, another of the film's comic-book flourishes. "I now had cultural appetites. I finished my book in four days. Math became useful."

Writing the Great American Novel isn't enough for him, though. There are stock market deals to master, mega-mergers to orchestrate. And there's also a corporate goliath, played nicely by Robert De Niro, to impress.

There are also, of course, complications -- the kind that make those attention-getting, four-hour side effects mentioned in passing at the end of Viagra commercials sound like a walk in the park. Expect extended blackouts, expect ruthless physical addiction, expect well-armed Russian gangsters.

Cooper's going to need every one of those IQ points if he's going to figure a way out of this.

Burger's film would have been better had he ended it about three minutes earlier than he does -- a move that would have given his movie at least a dash of profundity. Granted, it would have been cookie-cutter, comic-book profundity, but that's better than the pat, manufactured ending.

But then I guess the only thing truly limitless in Hollywood is the willingness of filmmakers to barter anything for a shot at a sequel.

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LIMITLESS2.5 stars, out of 4

Snapshot: A drama, based on a novel by Alan Glynn, about a man who discovers a drug that gives him access to 100 percent of his brain -- and a litany of new problems to go with it.

What works: Director Neil Burger keeps the tone breezy, with a smattering of humor.

What doesn't: The story waxes and wanes, and really would have been more effective if it would have ended about three minutes earlier than it does.